Ken Loach, longtime chronicler of social ills, seeks a hopeful note in The Old Oak [Video]

In so many ways, TJ Ballantyne is a classic Ken Loach hero: a working-class, middle-aged man trying to simply eke out a dignified living, but meeting obstacles at each turn — a victim of unforgiving social realities that leave people like him in the dust.

Like many of these Loach protagonists, TJ can’t get a break — even from gravity, as when he tries to fix the wooden letter “K” that rests above the Old Oak, the dilapidated pub he runs in a former mining town that’s been in decline for decades. Talk about decline: That letter keeps tilting downward, even when TJ fixes it with a broomstick. He turns away and it simply falls again.